Strange Little Girl
by Gamma Orionis
Summary: The Dark Lord has won. Harry Potter is dead. Luna Lovegood, Neville Longbottom and Ginny Weasley remain to fight for their side. And now the Malfoys have Neville, and it is for Luna to save him... Written for MissDominiqueLysander's 50K Romance Competition on the HPFC forum.
1. Chapter 1

Author's Notes: Do you hear that? That's the sound of Gamma starting another project! That's the sound of her starting something _long…_ for MissDominiqueLysander's 50K Romance Competition on the HPFC forum.

As per the title of the competition, this story shall be a minimum of 50 000 words long. It is also starting off as gen, but shall develop…

Voldemort wins!AU.

Enjoy!

)O(

The basement where Luna, Neville and Ginny were hiding was cold.

There was a draft from the fall air that kept catching them, even as they huddled into the warmest corner, closest to the small fire that Ginny had conjured. They dared not do any more dramatic magic – spells to keep out the cold air, for example – for fear of drawing attention to themselves.

"I'm hungry," Neville muttered, rubbing his hands together and holding them out over the fire.

"I'm not too full either," Ginny hissed back. "But – I don't know, you may have forgotten… we don't have any food."

"Quiet," Luna whispered.

"Why? Do you hear something?"

"No, but it would be difficult to hear anything with you two arguing," Luna reminded them reasonably. "The snatchers might be right outside, and we wouldn't be able to hear."

Ginny swore under her breath and Neville leaned back against the wall, closing his mouth. Luna pulled her knees against her chest, rested her chin on them, and stared up at the ceiling.

A wrackspurt was floating around Ginny's head, but Ginny reached up to scratch her hair and it fluttered away, disappearing into the darkness.

"I'm tired," Luna murmured, quietly enough that her friends barely heard it.

If Neville had said it, Ginny would have snapped at him, but she just sighed and stared mournfully at Luna, who stared back, not frowning, but not exactly smiling either. It was difficult to smile under such circumstances, even for Luna.

November was creeping up on them now – July, August, September and now most of October having passed since Harry Potter was killed, leaving the burden of trying to defeat the Dark Lord with those who remained alive. Ginny and Neville and Luna had not even been able to find Ron or Hermione after the battle, and Ginny had coldly but firmly decided that they were probably dead and it would do no good to look any further for them. And so the three of them had mourned briefly, then taken up the cross of bringing down the Dark Lord.

It was, Luna reflected, probably not conducive to their attempts for them to be sitting in a cellar all day and all night.

"I'm tired too," Ginny sighed. "We all are. But what are we supposed to do?"

"I want to go home," Neville admitted quietly. The girls looked at him – since the battle, and even for the year leading up to it, Neville had been unwavering in his determination and bravery, and it now felt more than a little strange to hear him admitting to even the vaguest of vulnerabilities.

"I want to go home too," said Ginny. "I wish we had a wireless so we could tell…"

She didn't finish, but they all knew what she had meant to say. So that we could tell when people we knew were dying.

"I'm not worried about going home," Luna spoke up. "Daddy will be fine, I think."

"Why do you think that?" Ginny asked – gently, but still firmly. She was not the sort who accepted nonsense if she thought she was seeing it.

"I just know he's going to be all right." Luna shrugged her shoulders slightly. "He's very strong, you know. And besides, the horn of the Crumple-Horned Snorkack has many magical properties, and I'm sure that it will protect him."

"I don't suppose you happen to have a bit handy?" Neville asked, with more than a twinge of sarcasm in his voice. "We could do with some luck right now."

"No."

"Shut up, Neville," Ginny told him. She moved around the small fire and put her arms around Luna, who did not react to her friend's touch. "It's going to be all right, Luna," Ginny said, but Luna knew perfectly well that it was herself that her friend was trying to convince, not Luna.

"I know," Luna said, resting her chin on Ginny's shoulder. "I think things are going to turn out just fine. They always do, in the end."

"Oh, you're damned optimistic," Ginny said with a soft chuckle, then she straightened up and moved back to her position on the other side of the fire. "I'm going to sleep. Luna, can you stay up a bit more, listening? When you want to go to sleep, then just wake Neville and have him take over. We don't want any snatchers finding us tonight…"

"We don't ever want any snatchers finding us," Luna pointed out in the most reasonable voice that she could manage. She rested against a sack of rice that was being stored in the cellar, stretching out her legs a little, and stared up at the ceiling, to try to get a glimpse of the wrackspurts again.

"That's right," said Ginny grimly. "We certainly don't." She turned over onto her side, curling up like a cat on the ground and pulling her cloak – the grimy remains of it, at least, which she had been using for cloak, blanket, carrying vessel and weapon for the past several months – over her shoulders. Neville lay down beside her, and Luna was left, sitting up and watching the flames flicker and pop in front of her.

She was confident her father would be all right – he always was, and she simply couldn't imagine any situation in which he wouldn't be, as long as the Death Eaters didn't capture her. But she was a little concerned for her own – and Neville and Ginny's – safety, she had to admit.

This whole business of being on the run was not very convenient. They didn't know what the Death Eaters were doing, nor did they know anything about what was happening outside except what Ginny could find when she pulled the hood of her cloak up over her head to shield her face and hair and went out scrounging for newspapers, and that news was always days out of date when she got it – and who knew how accurate it had been in the first place?

But what else could they do? The three of them had discussed matters over and over again and none of them could come up with any course of action that they would be able to take. The Dark Lord was in power, the only person who could (according to the prophecy, which Ginny had heard about from Harry in that brief period of time that they had been able to speak to each other before the battle erupted) defeat him was dead, and Ginny, Nevilel and Luna were just three students – not even very good students like Hermione Granger had been.

Ginny was the best among them academically, but even she wasn't particularly remarkable. Neville had improved greatly, of course, but he was still just average at fighting, and Luna… well…

She didn't like to think that she wasn't being of use to them, but in her brutal honesty with herself, she had to think that she wasn't. She couldn't fight like either of them, she didn't know anything about Lord Voldemort's plans, and sometimes she worried that she was slowing them down, even though she could preform basic spells that could help them. She wasn't good enough at any sort of magic to be an asset to them; she was just… there.

Perhaps, she sometimes thought, they might do better without her.

She had voiced these concerns to Ginny, who shot them down instantly, insisting to her that she was the most useful and wonderful girl that any group could hope to have (now that Hermione was gone, at least – even Ginny conceded that Hermione might have been more useful). But even when Ginny was telling Luna not to worry, and that she wasn't slowing them down, Luna was aware of a hint of doubt in her friend's voice, as though she might be just a little worried that Luna actually was, and that it would serve them better to leave her to her own devices instead of dragging her along.

But, of course, darling Ginny couldn't do that. She was too brave, too strong and loyal to ever leave her friend to the mercy of the snatchers or the Death Eaters. Luna had told her that she would be fine on her own if Neville and Ginny wanted to leave her behind, but Ginny had been adamant that no, Luna was most certainly not going to be left behind, and Neville backed her up.

So Luna was still with them. She sat in the basement and listened for snatchers and wondered if the Blibbering Humdingers were also infesting Malfoy Manor, where the Dark Lord was currently in residence, if what she had overheard from one particularly talkative passing snatcher was to be believed. Which, she supposed, it most likely wasn't.

She toyed with her butter beer cork necklace – oh, she still had that, and how she loved it. It was a comfort to her, when everything was so terrible as it currently was, to be able to slip the corks through her fingers, one by one, counting them off like a Catholic's rosary beads, and remembering when she was seven and had strung them onto the necklace with greatest care and with her father's help.

She did hope that Daddy was all right.

Luna rested her head on a sack and stared up at the small, narrow window that was just above the ground outside, and just below the ceiling in here. It let in a pale, dusty, murky shaft of moonlight; not enough to really see anything by, just enough to make it easier to discern outlines and vague shapes outside the globe of light that the fire provided. Something flickered in the corner, but from this distance, Luna could not tell whether it was a wrack spurt, one last butterfly taking refuge from the cold of the impending winter, or just a bit of dust floating through the air that had caught the sunlight just right.

She chewed on her lip, dragging the corks through her fingers again, and looking now at the sleeping forms of her friends. Ginny's hair – bright red but dulled with the dirt and grease that had been accumulating in it for the months that they had been hiding for – was spread out over the ground like a great bloodstain, and Neville looked tinier than Luna had ever thought of him, curled up beside her. They looked, she thought, like children in a picture book.

Her father had gotten her a Muggle picture book once, she remembered. She remembered because of the pretty, non-moving pictures, so simple that it was fascinating. In it, a little boy and a little girl had lain in beds beside each other, and over their heads, there were rough, crude cloud shapes, and pictures of candies dancing inside.

Sugarplums danced in their heads, hadn't that been what the book had said? Luna could hardly remember now, but she hoped that sugarplums – whatever those were; some kind of candy, she supposed, she had never bothered to ask; but they sounded pleasant – were dancing in Neville and Ginny's heads. She hoped that they were having sweet dreams about those dancing sugarplums.

Perhaps sugarplums were like dirigible plums? Only instead of floating, they stirred themselves into tea…

Luna felt her eyelids falling shut, and rubbed at her eyes to keep them open. She wasn't going to fall asleep, not yet – Neville and Ginny needed more rest. They were the ones spending the whole day doing things; the least that Luna could do was stay awake for long enough to give them some good napping time.

Oh, but she was so terribly tired…

Her head fell back against the sack of rice, and she just barely managed to prod Neville awake with one foot before her eyes shut and her breathing went slow and even. She had never felt so exhausted, though she could scarcely think of anything in the world less tiring than sitting alone in a basement all day.


	2. Chapter 2

Luna woke with a distinct sense of something being wrong. She couldn't explain what was causing her the feeling – not exactly, in any case – but it was there, and it was strong enough to make her feel a little ill.

She sat up, rubbing her eyes, and looked around her.

Yes, she could tell instantly, something was certainly quite wrong.

Ginny was sitting towards the edge of the cellar, away from Luna and close to the rickety ladder that led upstairs, rocking slowly back and forth like a madwoman, and even from the distance and in the dark, Luna could see panic in her friend's eyes.

"What's wrong, Ginny?" she asked, sitting up and pulling herself across the ground towards her. "Has something happened? You look dreadful…"

"It's Neville." Ginny said, and her voice was tight and strained with a tearful note in it. "He went out to see if he could get a paper or breakfast or something over an hour ago, and he isn't back."

"Oh…" Luna nodded slowly, more thoughtful than surprised. She understood – and she understood why this upset Ginny so. It _should_ upset Ginny. It was quite terrifying, really. "Did he have his wand?"

"No!" Ginny's voice cracked. "No, he didn't! He left it here, and he could have been captured and there's nothing we can do!" She all but flung off the stairs and into Luna's arms, clutching her tightly. "Luna… I don't know what to do. I'm so- scared…"

"I know…" Luna patted Ginny's hand lightly, but her eyes had already gone unfocussed, and she was gazing absently at the roof above them, biting her lip thoughtfully and watching dust motes – and perhaps that was a wrackspurt, just there – float through the air.

"You're not _listening, _Luna!" Ginny all but shouted. She grabbed Luna by her shoulders and shook her, trying to force her head back down so that they could look at each other. "Don't you _understand_? Neville could be dead! Doesn't that matter to you?"

"Yes," Luna said, nodding. "But not very much."

"_What_?" Never before had Luna seen such an expression of horror, dismay and disgust on her friend's face. "You- _what_ did you just say?"

"It doesn't matter very much that he might be dead because he probably isn't, you see," she clarified, blinking and looking very seriously at Ginny. "The Death Eaters have probably just taken him and put him in the cellar of a manor until they can get him to tell them all about us… well, us or whoever the Death Eaters think are trying to get rid of them now."

"That's even worse, then!" cried Ginny. "He'll be alive down there, and all alone – how can you be so- so _blasé _about this? Do you have _any idea what he'll be going through_?"

"Yes," Luna said quietly.

Ginny paled. "Oh, Luna… I didn't… didn't mean…"

"It's all right," she said. "But I think Neville will be quite fine there. It isn't _so_ bad, really. I'm sure he'll be able to manage it. At least, for now."

"_For now_? How long is he going to last? How in the name of _God_ are we going to get him out?" Ginny was all but hysterical, and she pounded one fist against a sack of rice that was leaning against the stairs. A seam split and rice poured out, all over the floor. Ginny swore vehemently.

"I don't know," Luna said, handing Ginny her wand so that she could mend the bag. "I'm sure we can think of a way."

"You talk as though we have all the time in the world! Luna– what did they do to you when you were there?" Ginny lowered her voice and leaned over towards her, looking quite terrified. "Did they torture you? Do you think they might torture Neville."

"No," Luna told her. "They didn't torture me… well, not very much, at any rate. Bellatrix did, a little, but only when she was angry. They just put me in the cellar of Malfoy Manor with Mr. Ollivander and waited for me to give up and tell them where you were… or for my father to come get me, or bring Harry Potter to them."

"Yeah, well, they aren't going to be waiting for Harry Potter now, are they?" Ginny asked darkly, tears edging into her voice. "So what else could they want? What have we got that they want?"

"Nothing, I expect," Luna said. She wasn't looking at Ginny, but watching the wrackspurt circle her head slowly. She jumped a little when it disappeared amongst Ginny's bright hair. Ginny seemed unaware.

"They might not even know that Neville's with us. They might torture him, actually," she added thoughtfully, "just until he tells them something about who he's working with – they'll want to hear that they _do_ still have some enemies so that they can fight us."

"Well, that's just bloody _brilliant!_" Ginny shrieked. "So they'll drive him mad like they did to his parents!"

"Ginny…"

"Drive him mad until he tells them where we are, and they'll come for us, and then we'll be killed–"

"Ginny?"

"And then _he'll_ go on, and kill everyone _he_ wants, and there's nothing that anyone's going to be able to do about it!"

"Ginny!"

"_What_?"

Luna leaned forward and gave Ginny's ear a quick smack with a cupped palm. Ginny yelped in pain, but moment later, the wrackspurt fluttered out and retreated back to its corner, and Luna sat back with a satisfied smile.

"What was _that_ for?" Ginny cried, rubbing her ear.

"You had a wrackspurt," Luna explained. "It was flying around in your brain. Do you feel better now?"

For a moment, Ginny simply stared, then she burst out laughing. It was horrified, hysterical laughter – laughter of someone in a terrible situation, laughing because they _needed_ to rather than because something was actually funny.

"Yeah," she said, with a wide smile, though tears were glistening in her eyes. "Yeah, thanks, Luna. I'm sure that it was the _wrackspurt_ that was causing all that…"

"You're welcome," Luna said mildly. "Now we can discuss what we're going to do, and you won't be all angry or fuzzy. Really," she added, "it shouldn't be so _very_ difficult to get Neville out. Not if they do the same things that they did to me. Harry and Ron and Hermione got me out without too much trouble at all, remember?"

"Yeah, you told me… of course, they're dead now, so they won't be much use," Ginny said, still rubbing her ear absently. "And the Death Eaters probably learned a bit from that experience, didn't they? So maybe they'll be keeping a closer watch on Neville than they were on you."

"Maybe," Luna conceded. "But they might not be, and even if they are, they're always going to make mistakes."

"You think?"

"Of course." She nodded seriously. "They don't really expect anyone to come after Neville, you know, because no one would know about him disappearing at all except for the people that he's with. And that's just you and me, and they don't even know about us."

"So what do we do?" Ginny asked, rather hopelessly. "We can't just- just let them torture him until he tells them where we are or goes insane… or until they get bored with him," she added.

"Oh, no, of course we won't do that."

"We have to help him!"

"Yes."

"_So how_?"

Luna blinked at Ginny with a rather nonplussed expression. "How? Well, that depends – do you suppose that they'll be keeping him at Malfoy Manor like they did with me?"

"Probably…" Ginny said, nodding slowly and allowing one shoulder to rise slightly in a sort of half-shrug. "It's a _massive_ assumption, and they might not be, but it's all that we've got to go on, so we might as well assume that if he _isn't_ at Malfoy Manor, he'll at least be somewhere near there…"

"Well, good." A wide smile spread on Luna's face. "That makes everything much easier, because if he's at Malfoy Manor, then I can go get him. It won't be any trouble at all. I'll have him out in no time."

Ginny eyed her friend doubtfully, biting her lip and looking Luna up and down with a critical eye. Luna forced herself not to waver in her bright, cheery smile or relaxed demeanour – the last thing she needed to do was make Ginny think that she wasn't confident. She knew, after all, that she didn't look much like someone that people would want to put every bit of trust that they had in. Even Ginny, by far her closest friend, might not have thought it entirely wise, if the look that she was giving Luna was any indication.

"You think you'd be able to?" asked Ginny at last, in a very small voice.

"Yes," Luna said, nodding decisively. "Definitely. Absolutely."

"Well…" Ginny took a deep breath, then nodded. "I suppose we'll have to try, then."


	3. Chapter 3

Luna crept slowly up the cellar steps and lifted the trapdoor, peering around. She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw that the room was as empty as it had been when she, Neville and Ginny had first made the cellar their hideaway, weeks ago.

It was an old store, tucked away in a dilapidated street that no one ever seemed to come down, which made it as safe as any one spot could be, as far as Luna, Neville and Ginny had been concerned, and no one seemed to have decided that the abandoned store would make a good spot to stay since their last trip upstairs. Nor was there any sign of a fight – the door was closed and the dust as thick upon the floor as ever, except for the wide, blotchy, meandering trail that Ginny had swept between the trapdoor and the front door when they first chose it as their hiding spot, so that no one would be able to tell that people had been there.

But, of course, the fact that there was no sign of a fight was a bad thing. If there _had_ been a fight in the store, they would have been able to find some sort of evidence, but if there hadn't been a fight in here, and Neville really had been kidnapped, then they didn't have any kinds of clues. He could be anywhere. He could be absolutely anywhere, kidnapped by anyone…

But she didn't think that. She pushed the idea right out of her mind, for surely no one but the Death Eaters had any interest in Neville.

"Come up, Ginny," Luna called down, hoisting herself out of the trapdoor and leaning down to help Ginny, who was struggling with their packs. They had just two bags, one that held everything necessary for their comfort and survival – blankets and the like – and the other that held things that they could use in case of some sort of magical emergency – their wands, and Hermione Granger's as well, in case one of theirs got broken and they needed a temporary replacement, and a giant stack of books that Ginny had stolen from Hermione. The bags were enchanted so the insides were larger than the outsides, for the sake of convenience, but they were dreadfully heavy, and even Ginny, who was stronger than Luna by far, had trouble moving with one of them over each shoulder.

"Here," Luna said, taking the one with the books and slipping it easily over her own shoulder, then helping Ginny out into the store. "Well, if Neville was snatched here, then they certainly did it very quietly and without a lot of fuss, which is rather different from what they did to me, so I think that he was probably outside…"

"So at least they don't know where we are," Ginny pointed out. "That's something, at least, wouldn't you say?" Her voice was bitter and a little cold.

"Yes, I think that is rather good news," Luna agreed.

"Of course, it also means that we've got absolutely no idea where they are," Ginny continued. "And that's just bloody _fantastic_, isn't it? I mean, it's not as though we'll probably _die_ if we just go wandering off to search for him without knowing where he is…"

"Oh, I wouldn't worry so," Luna told her. "I think that we can probably find where Neville went, and what happened… it will just take a little bit of thought…"

"Yeah, well, you're good at that, so you can go outside and walk around and try to work it out, and I'll keep watch, yeah?" Ginny suggested, moving over to the store windows and peeping outside, then urging Luna to follow her out.

"Yes, quite," said Luna, already growing a little in concentration. She walked slowly to the door, then bit on her lip and placed her feet in the footprints near the door that were made with Neville's distinctive, square–toed shoes. They were large and broad and rather ugly, as Ginny had told him time and again, but they did leave good foot marks. Luna walked slowly in the footprints, glad that the ground was rather soft and muddy and at least some had been left.

"He walked out this way," she said, speaking as much to herself as to Ginny, then pausing when the footprints lined up with each other, "then he stopped, probably to look around, I think… and he didn't see anyone, so he kept walking this way…" She followed the line of prints, moving slowly towards the stack of papers that one person had thrown by the ground. They were days old, but there were several that kept being added to the top, enough to give them some idea of how things had changed over time. Hardly current events, but better than nothing. "And he stopped again." She paused once more, then looked thoughtfully up and down the street, then back to the footprints. "He turned around a little it – I think he must have heard a noise… and then… he moved over and he knelt down to get a paper…" She stopped and pointed at the large smear in the muddy ground, and s shred of torn newspaper. "And then they got him."

"Lord…" Ginny cursed softly. "So he thought… God…" She rubbed her eyes a little. "That's bloody terrifying, you know."

"I know," Luna said. "Are you keeping watch well?"

"Yeah.., yeah…"

Luna was silent for a moment, then lifted her head, sniffing like a dog, turning her head back and forth and breathing in deep gulps of air. Then she knelt down, sniffing again around the ground.

"What are you doing?" Ginny demanded. "You're going to be impossible to clean up!"

"I don't think you need to worry much about cleaning me up," Luna said absently. She was kneeling in the mud, her head tilted to the side and her eyes closed as her nostrils flared with every breath.

"What are you doing?" repeated Ginny.

"Mm." Luna made a soft, noncommittal little noise, then said, "Whoever got him is friends with Narcissa Malfoy."

"_Pardon me?_"

"I can smell perfume," Luna explained quietly. "Can't you?"

Ginny sniffed a bit, and there was indeed a faint scent of something that _might_ have been perfume on the air.

"And?"

"And it smells like the perfume that she wore when I was in Malfoy Manor. It got all over everything. It's very strong... and I'd recognize it anywhere..."

"So there's perfume in the ground," Ginny said with a small shrug. "That doesn't prove much of anything. It could be anyone's perfume, even if it smells of Malfoy Manor. Other people wear perfume, don't they?"

"Yes," Luna conceded. "Other people wear perfume. But not many people have money to spend on it, not since the war, nor are most people willing to leave their houses to go shopping for little things like that…"

"How do you figure that?"

"Have you seen anyone out?"

Ginny fells silent, looking up and down the street. A raven swooped down overhead and circled above them for a moment before taking off in another direction, but there was no other movement, even from the cross-roads that were just visible in the distance. Ginny _knew_ that they were far, _far_ more popular than the street they were on, and yet they looked just as abandoned, with every door she could see locked and bolted and curtains drawn.

"No," she admitted. "I suppose that I haven't."

"So…"

"That is a _way_ too flimsy theory to risk our lives for," she insisted, almost wanting to slap Luna for her _stupid_ naïveté. "Even if – _if_ – Narcissa Malfoy – or whoever it was at Malfoy Manor that reeked of that perfume so much that you started smelling like it – is the only person in the world with this perfume – and she probably isn't – and even if you're recognizing it – which you might not be – all that proves is that one of the people who was there was near Narcissa at some point. It doesn't prove that Neville's at Malfoy Manor!"

"No," Luna admitted. "No, it doesn't really, I suppose. But it does prove that he was taken by someone who spends plenty of time at Malfoy Manor or near Narcissa Malfoy, which means that he was probably taken by Death Eaters, and the Death Eaters seem to like Malfoy Manor, so it seems most likely that they'd keep him there. And besides, we have to do something, and we have a better chance of getting into Malfoy Manor than any of the other places the Death Eaters control, so we have a better chance of saving Neville by breaking into Malfoy Manor than by doing nothing, don't you think?"

Ginny fell silent and glared at Luna with an expression of someone very clearly trying to work out what the right thing to do was, then finally, she ran her fingers through her mess of red hair, rubbed her forehead, and nodded very slowly.

"Right," she said. "All right. Yeah. Let's go wit that, then. We need to go get Neville, and running off to Malfoy Manor is better than nothing, I suppose. So yeah, tell me your plan to get into Malfoy Manor and save him, and as long as it's not going to get us killed or use wrackspurts as a decoy or something…"

"It's not going to," Luna said with conviction.

"Not what to what? Get us killed or involve wrackspurts?"

Luna hesitated. "Well…" she said slowly, "It's _definitely_ not going to involve wrackspurts…"


	4. Chapter 4

"No one's going to listen to you, Luna," Ginny told her. They were standing just outside the Three Broomsticks, Luna with Ginny's rather ragged cloak slung over her shoulders and Ginny wearing a very sceptical expression. "You don't look anything like Astoria Greengrass."

"But the people here don't know what Astoria Greengrass looks like," Luna pointed out brightly, looking at herself in the reflection and tucking her hair under the hood of the cloak. "People are very nice at pubs when times are bad like this, I think. Someone will tell me the way to Malfoy Manor."

"Wish we had taken those damn Apparition classes," Ginny muttered. "It's our fault for thinking that we had plenty of time to learn…"

"If we tried to Apparate, you would get all nervous and we might splinch ourselves," Luna reminded her. "Don't worry. I'll be back out in a moment." She looked at Ginny with a smile as wide and easy as though she were popping into the store for a bag of apples, then stepped inside the pub. Ginny followed her, slouching and keeping her head down and watching.

"Hello," Luna said brightly, sitting down at the table of a thin, rather small little man with a pinched-up face. "Do you live around here?"

"What's it to you?" he asked suspiciously, clutching his tankard of butterbeer. He shied away from Luna, fear crossing his face. "I ain't done nothing wrong! Blood's pure back three generations! You can ask anyone! I used to work for the Prophet!"

"I think you probably did a lovely job," Luna told him. "And I'm sure that you have lovely blood. I'm looking for Draco Malfoy."

"Eh? Who's that, then?"

"Lucius Malfoy's son," Luna told him, the serene smile that she was wearing not wavering for a second. "Do you know where they live? You see, my cousin's going to be married to Draco and I was sent here to help with the wedding, but I seem to have lost my way – I'm not allowed to Apparate yet, you see."

"Lucius Malfoy?" asked the man, cocking his head suspiciously.

"Yes. I need to get to their manor."

"How do I know that you're not one of them- them…" He dropped his voice to a whisper, glancing around nervously. "_Order of the Phoenix_ people? I could get killed for helping you."

"No, you couldn't," Luna said brightly. "I'm a Greengrass, and I don't know your name, so I couldn't incriminate you, so you can tell me where they live."

"Are you going to stand around like that, or are you going to buy something?" Rosmerta shouted across the barroom at Ginny, who blanched and shook her head, ducking out and covering her face before Rosmerta could recognize her. Luna glanced at her, and the last thing Ginny saw before she rushed out the door was Luna turning back to the man and leaning forward to talk very seriously to him.

She came out a few minutes later carrying a napkin and practically skipping.

"He was a very nice man," she told Ginny. "He made me a lovely little map and everything, you see?" She opened the napkin, upon which a list of directions and a rather clumsy route were drawn up in blotchy black ink. "Wasn't that lovely of him?"

"How did you manage that?" Ginny asked, taken aback.

"Oh, it wasn't hard. Just a matter of being polite to him."

Ginny shook her head a little. "I'll never understand you, Luna…"

"Most people say that," Luna said brightly, pulling off the cloak and handing it back to Ginny. "I'll take the bag, shall I? We'd better go quickly. It's going to take some time, and Neville would probably prefer if we got there quickly."

"You're not planning on _walking_ all that way?" Ginny demanded, looking horrified.

"No, of course not. That would take a dreadfully long time, wouldn't it?" Luna had already started down the road, towards the ruins of Hogwarts.

"What, then? How are we going to get to Malfoy Manor?" Ginny demanded, hoisting the bags of their things securely over her shoulders and following Luna. "There aren't going to be any brooms in Hogwarts up to the trip, you know!"

"I know," Luna said. "But I think that there might be some Thestrals who will be up to it…"

Ginny followed Luna, a smile creeping across her face, as Luna trotted down the streets. When they reached the edge of the grounds, Luna paused and glanced about briefly, then set off once more, over the field that they had once played Quidditch on, cutting across it to get to the Forbidden Forest faster. Ginny lagged behind, looking around at the remains of the stadium. The Battle of Hogwarts had extended far enough to burn the stands, and all that remained were rickety frames and heaps of charred wood.

She had played on this field, with Harry and Ron. She had listened to Lee Jordon's commentary – and Luna's, that once – and sat with her friends and discussed Quidditch or gossiped about boys or done other things that ordinary teenage girls were meant to do. If someone had told her, while she was sitting up in these stands in her first year that six years later, she would see them burned to the ground, she wouldn't have believed them.

Or would she? Maybe it wouldn't have been so hard for her to believe – her first year, after all, had been punctuated with her possession by Tom Riddle.

A shudder ran up her spine and she sped up again to get to Luna's side.

"You don't think that the battle scared them all away?" she asked, noting how confident Luna looked, striding towards the forest. She looked quite as serene and as much as though nothing could ever harm her as she had when she walked through the halls of school while people pointed and whispered.

"No, I don't think so," she said serenely. "They're rather brave creatures, you know, Thestrals."

"Mm." Ginny's one experience with riding a Thestral had been quite terrifying – she hadn't been able to see it, for at that time, she had never seen a person die.

Well, that had changed. Perhaps riding it wouldn't be so unnerving now.

"They're very beautiful too, really," Luna continued. "I think people would like them a good deal more if you could see them without having to see someone die. If everyone could see them, no one would be afraid."

"I wouldn't know."

"Well, you'll get to find out rather soon," Luna said brightly, all but skipping into the forest. Ginny followed her warily, glancing about. The faint light from the grey sky was blotted out quickly as they walked into the forest, deeper and deeper, and Ginny's heart pounded nervously.

"Don't be scared," Luna said softly, and Ginny was unsure as to whether she was talking to her, or to herself, or perhaps to the Thestrals. She, Luna, slowed to a stop, and Ginny hovered nervously half a step behind her.

"Would you give me my wand, please, Ginny?" Luna asked.

Ginny groped around in the bag for a moment, then handed it to her. Luna smiled at it rather fondly, stroking the handle, then rolled back the sleeve of her dress, and pointed it at her arm.

Ginny realized what she was doing a split second before she did it. "Luna, don't–"

But she had already cut herself.

A deep gash appeared up her arm and she winced a little as blood spilled out, dripping down onto the ground. She rubbed it in her hair and on a nearby tree, and up and down her arms, and then held them high in the air and went still, humming softly to herself while blood dripped down onto her blouse.

Ginny waited, holding her breath, for something to happen.

And something did.

It seemed like an excruciatingly long time, but at last, something rustled in the trees nearby. Ginny jumped, but Luna just turned towards it and held her arms in front of her, as though she were offering something.

And then it emerged.

When Ginny had heard descriptions of Thestrals as skeletal sorts of horses, she had pictured something that looked like a regular horse, but malnourished. She had _not_ been expecting the weird and unsettling combination of horse, lizard, snake and _bone_ that stepped out from between the trees. She felt as though the wind had been knocked out of her, but Luna smiled and took a step forward, and it leaned down and slowly started to lick the gash in her arm.

"Hello," Luna said softly, patting its head. "Hello…"

"Luna," Ginny squeaked. "Is that a…?"

"Yes, isn't it pretty?" Luna turned to her friend, beaming proudly, like a mother showing off her child's artwork – or her child itself. The Thestral's tongue moved to lap up the drops of blood from her face, and Luna smiled. "It tickles."

"Is it… is it going to hurt you?"

"Oh, no. They're quite harmless, really, unless you make them angry," Luna told her. "Look, there's another…" She pointed vaguely towards a clump of brush, and if Ginny squinted, she could just make out a pair of large, bright eyes amongst the leaves. Luna bent her head, letting some of her blood-spattered hair wave in the direction of the brush, and a second later, another Thestral emerged and began to lick Luna's hair delicately.

"This is bloody terrifying, you know," Ginny muttered, trying to reconcile the animals before her with the invisible creature that she had ridden to the Ministry of Magic at the end of her fourth year. The Thestral licking Luna's arm looked barely strong enough to keep itself upright, what with its spindly legs and bony torso – much less support a rider.

"There's no need to be scared," Luna said. "They won't hurt you. Why don't you come over here and pet them?"

Ginny hesitated, then took one slow, hesitant step forward and laid her hand upon the flank of the one licking Luna's hair. It jerked its head back and eyed Ginny warily, and she was sure that her heart stopped.

"Smile at it," Luna told her, petting the other one on its head. "Don't act like you're afraid."

Ginny hesitated, then gave the Thestral a few slow pats. It tossed its head slightly and looked at her.

"You see?" said Luna, smiling brightly. "They aren't so scary at all, are they?"

That was not something that Ginny would have said about the Thestrals – they were by far the most terrifying thing that she had seen since she laid eyes upon Lord Voldemort last year – but Luna was smiling hopefully and Ginny managed a nervous half-laugh.

"No… not too scary."

"Good," said Luna. She gave her Thestral a gentle kiss on its reptilian forehead, then stepped onto a stump and lifted herself gracefully onto the animal's back. "I can take the bags, if you want, Ginny."

Ginny hesitated, the handed them to her and looked to the other Thestral, which was watching her rather warily.

It didn't look to her like it would at all enjoy having her ride it.

"Don't worry," Luna said softly. "It likes you."

"How can you tell?"

"I just know. Haven't you ever been able to tell when somebody liked you?"

"With people, yeah – not with Thestrals…"

"Don't worry about it," Luna told her. She reached out, leaning over her Thestral's head, and patted Ginny's shoulder. "I promise it will be all right."

Ginny sighed doubtfully, but took the time to look at her Thestral and smile a little. "Hey..." She patted its head gingerly once more, then slowly reached out and grasped onto its neck. It bucked a little and she froze warily, then, with great difficulty, swung her leg over it.


End file.
